The Prolegomena prefixed to this work, and which occupy the larger part of the first and second volumes, consist of the following tracts, besides a Dedication to the King, and a short Preface.-Some Account of the Life of Spenser. List of Editions. Alterations of Spenser. Pieces of Criticism relative to Spenser. Imitations of Spenser. Commendatory Verses on Spenser.-These are all in the first volume; and by an arrangement, to us unaccountable, the remainder of the first volume contains the Shepherd's Calendar, and the Prolegomena are resumed in the second volume, which they fill, except six cantos of the first book of the Fairy Queen. The tracts in this volume are-Hughes's Essay on Allegorical Poetry, with Notes. His Remarks on the Fairy Queen, with Notes. Spence's Dissertation on the Defects of Spenser's Allegory, with Notes. Warton's Remarks on the Plan and Conduct of the Fairy Queen, with Notes. His Remarks on Spenser's Imitation from old Romances, with Notes. His Remarks on Spenser's Allegorical Character, with Notes. Editor's additional Remarks. His Remarks on Spenser's Stanza, Versification and Language, with Notes. The Editor's additional Remarks. Upton's Remarks on the Action and History of the Fairy Queen, with Notes. Hurd's Remarks on the Plan and Conduct of the Fairy Queen, with Notes. A Letter of the Author. Verses addressed to the Author with Notes. Verses addressed by the Author to, several Noblemen, &c. with Notes. The Besides this mass of prefatory matter, the bottom of the pages of the poems are filled with notes, from the pens of Upton, Church, Warton, &c. accompanied by many remarks of the present editor. Though it is our principal object to review this work as far as it relates to Mr. Todd, yet as his part of it is so much interwoven with the observations of the other critics, and as much of the merit of his labour, as we have already observed, must be derived from his selection, or rejection of the labours of his predecessors, it is impossible for us not to pay some attention to those remarks, which have long been in the possession of the public. Mr. Todd tells us in his Preface, that "in the present edition the antiquated spelling of the poet is altogether retained. It is sufficient" (if I may apply to this circunstance the just observation of Dr. Johnson respecting Shakespear)," that the words are Spenser's. If phraseology is to be changed as words grow uncouth by disuse, or coarse by vulgarity, the history of every language will be lost; we shall no longer have the words of any author, and as these alterations will be often unskilfully made, we shall have in time very little of his meaning." We must say, that Mr. Todd has brought a passage from Dr. Johnson, that has no reference whatever to the thing it is introduced to support. Dr. Johnson is speaking of words, Mr. Todd of the mode of spelling those words. We will quote the first part of Dr. Johnson's note. It is on the word huggermugger, in Hamlet, Act iv, Scene v. "All the modern editions that I have consulted, give it― In private to inter him." That That the words now replaced are better, we do not undertake to prove; it is sufficient they are Shakespear's," &c. &c. Now, though we entirely agree with Dr. Johnson as to the retention of the phraseology of an ancient writer, we as entirely disagree with Mr. Todd as to the retention of his orthography, or rather (if we may coin a word from analogy) his heterography. We know till within little more than a century our mode of spelling, even in printing, was not settled. In the Dedication to the first edition of the Tatler, published in 1710, we find BUSIE; but should this be followed in modern editions?or, shall we find some new editor who will carry his love for fac-simile printing so far, as to publish an edition of Shakespear, with all the anomalous spelling he could collect from the folios and quartos? We have now before us a fac-simile of an ancient MS. of Virgil, where the name of the poet is spelled Vergil, and the plural of the third declension made to terminate in is, instead of es, as patriæ finis, præsen tis divos; and this has been followed in an edition of Virgil, printed at Antwerp, 1614. for which the editor makes the following apologySi quæ ad orthographiam spectantia, aut alias inusitantius notata occurrerint ne vos continuo offendant, siquidem ea ex certissimis venerandæ antiquitates fontibus hausta constat. On this principle, the edition of some ancient writers, without stops, or even the division of words, might be defended. Si quis tamen glandes post aristas malit, to such a critic, and we fear there are many such, we recommend such adherence to the mode of spelling, when the art of English orthography was in its infancy, and which does not in the least affect either the phraseology, or the sense of the author, which it is the duty of every editor to preserve inviolable. Spenser has been generally supposed to have been Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth. Of this Mr. Todd takes notice in his Life of Spenser. It has been long a received opinion that he was nominated Poet Laureate. His cotemporaries certainly considered him worthy of the title, and frequently speak of him in terms appropriate to that distinction. Thus Webbe, in his Discourse of English Poetrie, published in 1586, contends, that Spenser may well wear the garlande, and step before the best of the English poets;"" and, what is very remarkable, in the third edition of the Shepheard's Calender, which was also published in 1586, the elder reading of the following verse, in the twelfth Eclogue" The rurall song of careful Colinet," (where Colinet means Spenser) is changed into "the laurell song," &c.The writer of the Sonnet addressed to Florio, in his Second Frutes, published in 1592, seems to point at Spenser by a similar expression. "So when that all our English witts lay dead, Thou with thy frutes our barrenes o're-spread, &c." 66 And Nash, in his Supplication of Pierce Penniless, published in the same year, declares that he had intended to decypher the excesse of gluttonie at large, but that a new Laureat saved him the la B 2 bor." bor." But the fact is as Mr. Malone has accurately stated it :~ "Undoubtedly Elizabeth had no Poet Laureate, till in February 1590-1 she conferred on Spenser a pension of fifty pounds a year, the grant of which was discovered some years ago in the Rolls Chapel, from which time, to his death in 1598-9, he may properly be considered as filling this office, though like most of his predecessors, and his two immediate successors, he is not expressly styled Laureate in his patent. The first part of this quotation we think proves nothing; for we know laurelled is an epithet applied to poets in general, and much oftener to others than to him whom the King honours with the title of Poet Laureat, with the addition of a salary and a butt of sack.— Perhaps it may not be quite irrelevant to the subject to observe, that the teri Laurcato, in Italian (a language much in fashion in the age of Elizabeth), was equivalent with Graduate. We have now before us an Italian translation of Gil Blas, where the French word Licentie is rendered Laureato. Neither do we think it at all material whether Spenser was, or was not styled Laureate in his patent, as at present there is neither patent or appointment, but the Laureat is only sworn to fidelity to the King by the Lord Chamberlain. Mr. Todd is at great pains to prove that Spenser did not die in that state of indigence which many writers have supposed, and we think he has been successful. To some readers, perhaps, this may not seem a very interesting inquiry. There are persons who think those who do not make the acquisition of property the chief object of their lives, should not expe to enjoy the common comforts of life; and that genius and poverty always do, and always ought, to accompany each other. But there are those who will be rejoiced to find, that persons who by their writings have soothed their cares, amused their fancy, and meliorated the morals of mankind, did not end their days in misery and mendicity. One of the chief proofs of Spenser's dying in extreme poverty, is from a conversation Drummond, of Hawthornden, records, as passing between himself and Ben Jonson." Jonson' (he says) told me that Spenser's goods were robbed by the Irish in Desmond's + rebellion; his house and a lit le child of his burnt, and he and his wife nearly escaped; that he afterwards died in King's street (Dublin) by absolute want of bread; and that he refused 25 pieces, sent him by the Earl of Essex, and gave this answer to the person who brought them that he was sure he had no time to spend them.” ” In answer to this Mr. Todd proves clearly that Spenser died in Kingstreet, Westminster, and that Dublin is an interpolation of Mr. Warton; and as to the rejection of the proffered assistance of the Earl of Essex, as Spenser had a wife, and at least two children who survived * Life of Dryden, page 84. + We should read Tyrone's instead of Desmond's rebellion.-Todd. him, Mr. Todd very justly asks, if he had been dying in extreme poverty, "would the tender-minded Spenser, with a wife and children participating his temporary distress, think only of himself on the melancholy occasion, and decline the offer of assistance at least so seasonable to them ?" In the Imitations of Spenser, Mr Todd has omitted the Parsonage. Improved, written by the present Laureat, and published in an edition of his Poems, in the year 1787. On this passage of Hughes's Remarks on the Fairy Queen. The trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, is shadowed in Book v. Canto ix. but the ́poet has avoided the catastrophe of her death, and has artfully touched on the Queen's reluctance and tenderness in that affair, by which he has turned the compliment on her justice into another on her mercy.' Mr. Todd has this note-"There is more of flattery than truth, however, in this compliment." Surely a great deal too much has been done with regard to the fatal event, to whiten the character of Mary, and blacken that of Elizabeth. To use the words of a late spirited, loyal, and patriotic writer," is it quite necessary that so great a rout should be made about Sir Archy's great-grandmother,' especially by southern Britons, when her justification must include a stain on the me-mory of one, whom Englishmen ought to value and to cherish as the protectress of their honour, the foundress of their commerce, and the supporter of their established religion?" To confine ourselves to this last consideration, if Queen Elizabeth was really serious in her zeal for the Protestant religion, if she felt as a royal patriot for the welfare of her people, if she looked back with the feelings of humanity on the tortures which she had seen inflicted, on patient, but resolute piety, she could not have been justified in not sacrificing any life to avert such horrors from the nation, which in all human probability would have been the consequence of the accession of another Popish Queen Mary. The observations of Warton, Upton and Hurd, on the Plan and Conduct of the Fairy Queen are so diffuse, and drawn out to such a length, that from that very circumstance they are almost unintelligible; for though there may be safety in a multitude of counsellors, in a multitude of words there is seldom precision. We will state shortly to our readers our own opinion on this subject. Some sort of unity of fable seems to have been aimed at in all works of fiction.. The ancients selected one principal and leading story, and blended short episodes with it, for the sake of variety. The more fervid and desultory genius of the Eastern fabulists, made their episodical parts the most prominent feature of the works, and only used the leading fable as a mean (if I may be allowed the expression), of stringing them together, and giving some appearance, at least, of unity to the whole. This is exactly the case with the Arabian Nights; the leading fable is founded on the bloody vow of the Sultan, the generous resolution of the Vizier's daughter, and her final triumph; into this the other stories are woven, but the introductory tale is continu ally brought to our recollection by the short conversation that precedes the narration of each separate night. Every tale is besides branched into a number of others, to which that story serves as a common bond of union, as the leading one does to the whole. This plan is preserved in the first half of Mr. Galland's translation (from which all ours are copied) and which is not more than a quarter of the whole. In the other half he has only selected such separate stories as struck him, without dividing the nights, or marking any connexion between them, except the catastrophe of the leading fable. By this contrivance an appearance, indeed, of general unity is preserved, but without that undivided attention and interest, which it is the object of unity to excite, as the mind is disagreeably perplexed by the broken chain of the narrative, expectation is suspended till all interest in the fable is lost, and instead of perspicuity, confusion was produced. This mode, however, was adopted by the poets of Italy, and copied from them by the earlier poets of this country. This is so obvious in Ariosto, that to enable the reader at all to follow the thread of his scattered tales, some of the editions have had recourse to the assistance of marginal references. Of the plan which we are told by Spenser himself, in his Letter to Sir W. Raleigh, he had contrived for the Fairy Queen, we discover little, if any trace, in what we have of that poem, which is exactly half of it; neither without this information could any notion have been formed of it; and, notwithstanding the opinion of Mr. Warton, that "according to this plan the reader would have been agreeably surprized in the last book, when he came. to discover that the series of adventures which he had just seen com-, pleted, were undertaken at the command of the Fairy Queen, and; that the Knights had severally set forward to the execution of them, from her annual birth-day festival:" in our opinion this surprize: would rather give the pleasure we feel from the solution of a difficult riddle, than that derived from seeing an unexpected and interesting catastrophe, arising from a number of various and apparently oppos ing incidents. Of the allegorical character, of which so much has been said by others, we shall only say, that to us it is a great drawback from the interest of the poem. Though we are ready "to go as far as who goes farthest," in our praise of Spenser as a poet in every respect, and to agree unequivocally with the opinion of that judicious critic, and, let us add what is more, that excellent and amiable man, the late Dr. Joseph Warton, that "the characteristics of this sweet and allegorical pet, are not only strong and circumstantial imagery, but tender and pathetic feeling, a melodious flow of versification, and a certain pleasing melancholy in his sentiments, the constant companion of an elegant taste, that casts a delicacy and grace all over his compositions." We look back with pleasure on our boyish days, when we read the works of this charming Poet without any more idea of allegory, than we had in Homer or Virgil, (where by the way some very sa gacious |